California is dealing with the most intense budget crunch in the country. One proposal for dealing with the financial hardship is one quite familiar to glassy-eyed freshman on 3 a.m. Taco Bell runs everywhere: marijuana.

Who says money can’t grow on trees?

While this plan doesn’t involve special heatlamps and a closet full of contraband, it would seek to profit from the growing and distribution of marijuana. Growers, retailers and distributors in California (where the drug is legal) would have to register with the state and pay a licensing fee. The drug itself would be subject to a tax of up to 41%.

State Senator Ron Calderon is to introduce the bill,… Read more…

Uncle Sam went to the WTO loaded for… well, it looks like Sam just wanted to go get loaded. On good ol’ US-brand firewater, that is!

According to Reuters.com, the US is pissed at the Philippine government. Why? Well, Obama’s tax lieutenants have a problem with the Philippine’s distaste of Jack Daniels. The miniature nation of islands has an excise tax on America’s Whiskey and gin. No big deal, except the tax on American spirits is anywhere between 10-40 percent more than those from within its own borders.

Listen, Philippines. America will look the other way if you kick around your second-class citizens or engage in some illegal arms dealing. The government… Read more…

Investors have long known that December and January are among the best months for stocks. Most investors know why, too: late in the year, it’s possible to sell losing stocks in order to shelter profits from the rest of the year. For example, if you’ve lost $1000 on GE, and made $1000 on IBM, you can sell both, take both losses—and pay not capital gains taxes on your profit.

Because of this, it makes sense to sell at the end of the year. (The IRS will let you buy the stocks back after 30 days and still give you the tax penalty.) And if people are selling stocks they still like, they’re going to buy… Read more…

A few years ago, PBS put together a special called “Tax Me if you Can“. And, regardless of how you feel about paying taxes, it’s clearly a big issue: they estimate that companies avoid up to $50 billion in taxes every year through tax shelters. The number may be high, but the idea is spot on: there is a lot of money sloshing into corporate treasuries that could be sloshing into the US treasury, instead.

But that’s a superficial way to look at it. There are some important questions that tax shelters bring up, and not all of them can be answered by soaking the rich:

1. Should people be penalized for

… Read more…

Remember when you didn’t know a new political scheme was unpopular until someone published a letter to the editor? Or until you stumbled on a blog? Now, thanks to Twitter, you can get opinions on Obamacare faster than ever!

Here’s a sampling of what people are saying about this tax issue:

Obamacare: all in favor say…

@Acaseofzombism : #obamacarefacts Under ObamaCare garfield will no longer hate mondays

@CyberWasteland : Under ObamaCare E.T. would’ve died. #obamacarefacts

@southworth : Under ObamaCare, Obama will bring about the Biblical Apocalypse, and it will be labeled a pre-existing condition. #obamacarefacts

@jephjacques Under ObamaCare, the CIA will replace the prozac in your tap water with its generic #obamacarefacts… Read more…

Let’s say you’ve got a steady job, a good income, people have to trust you (whether they like it or not), and you’re handling lots of other people’s money. What do you do? If you’re Mark Claybrooks, you start a sleazy scheme for defrauding people and taking bribes. Usually when you take bribes, you’ll get nailed by the government; they usually catch you by checking up on your taxes. Mark was safe from the IRS, for one simple reason — he worked there
.

According to one source, Claybrooks made $20,000 on the scheme — at least, that’s how much they caught him for. But the scheme lasted for several years,… Read more…

Today, new minimum wage rules go into effect, meaning that millions of people earning between $6.55 and $7.25 per hour will get either extra green or a pink slip. It all depends on a big bet by Congress — a bet they’re happy to make, but that they never have to pay on.

The bet works like this: if most minimum wage workers are underpaid, they win! They all get raises, and the money they make is closer to what they’re worth. They spend more money, the economy gets a boost, and everyone gets to thank Congress for making sure they’re paid the right amount.

And if they aren’t worth it —… Read more…

Your typical leveraged buyout kingpin lives in a swanky Park Avenue apartment, or maybe a hollowed-out volcano in the South Pacific. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get some good old-fashioned tax dodging and company buying-out, right in the middle of Utah.

Husband and wife team Lester and Jeanette Mower liked the idea of trading companies for fun. The weird thing is that the confusing part is the legal part: they would create new businesses, merge them with existing public companies, and sell the stock. That meant a blizzard of paperwork, lots of legal fees, and transactions with dozens of banks and brokers. That’s the complicated part.

Next comes the simple part: once they sold… Read more…

South Carolina governor Mark Sanford got into the headlines (and some hot water) for trying to turn down Federal stimulus payments earlier this month. Now, he’s famous for a different reason: in a rambling press statement, he admitted to having an affair with a woman in Argentina. Could this be a serious blow to stimulus opponents?

One commentator, Jeff Seemann, thinks so. Seemann claims that Sanford used stimulus money to pay for the affair:

The state of South Carolina is granted 2.8 billion dollars in federal stimulus money.
After originally rejecting the money, the SC Supremes smack Sanford down and force the state to accept the money.
Sanford later

… Read more…

You know what’s sane and normal? Having trouble letting go when a loved one dies. You know what’s not so sane or normal? Dressing up as a deceased parent for years in order to collect social security benefits and rent subsidies.

Irene Prusik passed away in 2003. But Thomas Prusik-Parkin kept on collecting her benefits for years. This had to take some planning: he started by fudging the numbers on her death certificate so she wouldn’t be listed as dead. After that, it was just a simple matter of, um:

donning a wig, nail polish and dresses to impersonate his dead mom and collect $115,000 in Social Security and rent subsidies.

Prusik-Parkin really exemplifies the… Read more…